In hockey, the goaltender occupies a unique position. While other players can roam the ice, the goalie is restricted to his immediate goal area. This fact dictates the type of skating each player will do. Forwards skate at high speeds, going forward, backward and turning with little or no side-to-side movement. Goaltending, however, requires rapid side-to-side (lateral) motion with only some forward and backward movement.
Therefore goalies' skates differ in design from other hockey skates. A goalie skate is constructed to withstand the impact of the puck. The other main difference, namely that goalie skates sit lower to the ice, actually hinders some lateral movement. However, there is nothing in the design to accommodate the radically different movement requirements.
The basic mechanics of side-to-side movement are the same whether on skates or not. One leg supplies the thrust, or push, while the other leg moves. On goalie skates, however, problems develop concerning the inability of the thrusting leg to remain fixed for maximum power.
The main difficulty is that as a goalie pushes off, the thrusting foot rolls, and the toe side of the boot rolls closer to the ice. As soon as the boot touches the ice, the foot will lose its grip and slip. This is because the boot, when it contacts the ice, will now act as a fulcrum or a lever and lift the skate blade off the ice. All goalie skates will have this problem because the boots sit lower to the ice than the boots of regular forward skates. There are two factors determining how quickly the blade slips.
The first concerns the height of the blade. Skates need to be sharpened regularly, which means grinding them down. As a blade gets ground down, or lower, the angle of contact between the boot and the ice becomes less acute. This means the goalie slips earlier in the thrusting movement.
The second factor concerns the sharpness of the skate blade. The purpose of sharpening skates is to get a better grip on the ice. Paradoxically however, goaltenders prefer their skates to be slightly dull. This is because it is essential that goalie skates also slide sideways, against the grain, so to speak. The negative side of this trade-off comes with the thrusting movement which requires a well planted foot to push off from. If the dull skate is to grip at all, it will have to be at a more acute angle. This means the boot will contact the ice sooner, the thrusting motion will be shorter and the goalie will fall.
In the light of these problems it is desirable to provide a means for gripping the ice temporarily, when the boot is rolled at an extreme angle, to make a power thrust to one side or to the other. However, clearly whatever additional gripping means are provided, they must not interfere with the normal skating action of the blades, and must not require any unusual body movements or contortions in order to bring the gripping means in to use.
In the past, it has been proposed, in Norwegian Patent number 72,925 to provide what appear to be auxiliary cornering blades, on a pair of speed skates. The apparent intention was to enable the speed skater to maintain speed, while traversing a curve on a speed skating course. The sport of speed skating differs substantially from hockey. In speed skating two speed skaters circle a continuous loop course having straight portions and curved ends, and are usually required to maintain separate lanes throughout most of the loop, and to change lanes only at predetermined distances in the race. The skaters must therefore maintain the highest possible speed on the curves at each end of the course, in their respective lanes, and also during the lane changeover.
Such speed skating skates are of an unusual design being of considerable length, greater than the length of the boot to which they are attached, and having essentially elongated linear edges. The proposal in the abovenoted Norwegian Patent involved the placing of auxiliary corner stabilising blades, approximately mid-way along the length of the blade. Apparently, the intent was that both the straight main blade, and also the auxiliary blade, should engage the ice simultaneously, when traversing a corner, so as to assist the skater in maintaining stability without loss of speed. It cannot be determined at this time whether this proposal ever met with any commercial success.
Clearly however it would be of no application to the type of skates used in hockey. Such skates are much shorter than speed skates. In addition they are sharpened so as to have a predetermined longitudinal profile which is generally convex, so as to permit the players to make abrupt turns during the game. It is known that players in some positions prefer the convexity of the skates to be either advanced towards the front, or towards the back of the skate. Goalies prefer a flatter blade, less convex, for balance, with the ends rockered. However, even the profile of a goalie blade is such that a goalie blade sitting on a flat surface will probably only have about two inches of blade in contact with the surface. This is because the goal keeper moves rapidly from side to side. Usually, the goalie will use the ball of his foot, and even the toes of the foot, to provide the powerful sideways thrust required to move his body quickly from one side to the other of the crease.
Consequently, the proposal shown in the aforesaid Norwegian Patent would be of no application to goalie skates used in hockey and if anything would prevent goalies from making the side-to-side movements on the ice, which are required in the game.